Many Beautiful Things

By Vincent Schiavelli

Vincent Schiavelli is known to most of us as a character actor who has appeared in such films as Ghost, Man on the Moon, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Schiavelli grew up in Brooklyn, speaking both Sicilian and English at home. Some of his earliest memories are of sitting at the kitchen table while his grandparents told stories of the life and the people they had left behind in Polizzi Generosa, a small city in the Madonie Mountains of Sicily.
As Schiavelli grew older, those stories, and the city about which they were told, took on a mythic quality. When he was nearly forty he made his first trip there, and what he found was more extraordinary than the "once upon a time" fables of his childhood.
In Many Beautiful Things, Schiavelli invites readers to join him in discovering the people, culture, and food of the city that has, in essence, become his second home. Equal parts memoir and cookbook, it is the best of both. Schiavelli is an accomplished and elegant writer who evokes a foreign and often closed culture from a unique perspective: an outsider fluent in the language with still-strong familial ties.
The recipes -- which reflect the ancient influences of Greece, North Africa, and Spain -- are simple, rustic, and delicious, depending on local products and seasonal bounty. This is not your usual Southern Italian fare but a unique regional cuisine: Pumpkin Caponata, Ditali with Drowned Lettuce, Fried Ricotta Omelet, Potato Gratin with Bay Leaves, Almond Love Bites, Veal Shoulder Roasted with Marsala, and Baked Pasta with Almonds (rigatoni baked in a pork ragu with chopped toasted almonds) are just a few of the extraordinary dishes you'll find in this book, all of which can be reproduced by cooks with delectable results.
Schiavelli provides a comprehensive list of mail-order sources. And if you want to visit Polizzi Generosa, there's a guide on how to get there, where to stay, and where to eat. Illustrated with black-and-white line drawings by Polizzi's best known artist, Santo Lipani (who also happens to be an extraordinary cook), Many Beautiful Things is a feast, both culinary and literary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: May 11, 2010
• ISBN: 9780743216913

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Many Beautiful Things

Also by Vincent Schiavelli

BRUCULINU, AMERICA: REMEMBRANCES OF SICILIAN-AMERICAN BROOKLYN, TOLD IN STORIES AND RECIPES

PAPA ANDREA’S SICILIAN TABLE: RECIPES FROM A SICILIAN CHEF AS REMEMBERED BY HIS GRANDSON

THE CHEFS OF CUCINA AMORE: CELEBRATING THE VERY BEST IN ITALIAN COOKING (EDITOR)

Vincent Schiavelli

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SANTO LIPANI

SIMON & SCHUSTER

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Atheneum Books for Young Readers

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2002 by Vincent Schiavelli

Illustrations copyright © 2002 by Santo Lipani

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or [e-mail]

Designed by Karolina Harris

Manufactured in the United States of America

10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schiavelli, Vincent.

Many beautiful things : stories and recipes from Polizzi Generosa / [Vincent Schiavelli ; illustrations by Santo Lipani].

p.   cm.

Includes index.

1. Cookery, Italian. 2. Cookery—Polizzi Generosa (Italy) 3. Polizzi Generosa (Italy)—Social life and customs. I. Title.

TX723 .S364   2002

641.59458—dc21   2002075512

ISBN 0-7432-1528-1

ISBN:-13: 9-7807-432-1528-2

eISBN:-13: 9-7807-432-1691-3

For Carol, my angel

Contents

INTRODUCTION

One  MY FIRST VISIT

Two  VIVA GANNUARFU!

Three  THE BARON AND THE SHEPHERD

Four  A QUESTION OF CULTURE

Five  A LITTLE PIECE OF EARTH

Six  SWEETIES AND SWEETS

Seven  PASTA WITH CHICKEN

Eight  THE POLIZZANI CIRCLE OF THE NIGHT

Nine  THE GATHERERS

Ten  ANDREA GOES TO POLIZZI

Eleven  WINTERTIME

Twelve  TRANSITION

THE RECIPES BY CATEGORY

MAIL-ORDER SOURCES

TRAVELING TO POLIZZI GENEROSA

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

Introduction

As we grow, there is a point in childhood when our vision of the world widens. We begin to understand, in a very rudimentary way, that we are part of something larger than the boundaries of home and family. For example, learning our last names, addresses, and telephone numbers helps place us in this big new world.

Among my earlier recollections of learning these details—Schiavelli, 1264 Myrtle Avenue, Glenmore 2-2543, Brooklyn, America—there is another place-name as deep and as old in my memory: Polizzi Generosa.

My grandparents Carolina (Vilardi) and Andrea Coco had separately emigrated from this small city in the Madonie Mountains of Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century. She had been a schoolteacher and he a master chef, a monzù. I grew up in their household, learning Sicilian as a close second language to English.

After school, I would sit at one end of the kitchen table and do my homework as my grandfather stood at the other end preparing dinner. The monzù chose to share all his culinary secrets with me, secrets guarded over a lifetime. While Papa Andrea worked, both he and my grandmother told me endless, wondrous stories about Polizzi Generosa; stories about a magical land where prickly pears and figs abounded, watermelons were round, and artichokes could be eaten whole.

They told me about their own childhoods and of their grandparents. Sometimes the stories had lessons, but always they were a look at a world far different from mine, although people there lived by the same rules as they did in our urban Sicilian-American neighborhood.

I listened to these stories over and over, always hearing them as if for the first time, even though the words and phrasing never varied. As I grew older, I understood them as part of my heritage.

My grandmother died in 1960. In 1968, when I was twenty, my grandfather died at ninety-six, but their stories of nineteenth-century Polizzi Generosa are still vivid in my mind and heart. And the great gift of food Papa Andrea gave me is still alive at my table.

As years passed, Polizzi Generosa became to me more mythic than real. I could never find it on any map. College, relationships, working as an actor in Los Angeles, and all the other joys and responsibilities of life served to postpone a Sicilian quest. It wasn’t until I was nearly forty that I made my first trip to Polizzi. What I found there in 1988, and what I continue to discover on each return, is far more extraordinary than I ever could have imagined: the once upon a time of my childhood.

The beautiful city of Polizzi Generosa is perched three thousand feet above sea level, nestled at the edge of a pristine mountain national park. Untouched by fire, flood, or war for centuries, Polizzi looks virtually the same as it did in the eighteenth century, and more recently in my grandparents’ day. Carolina’s and Andrea’s descriptions of churches, convents, palazzi, even specific streets and balconies are accurate even today.

Although the population of Polizzi sadly dwindles each year, the people diligently maintain their culture and traditions, like an eternal flame to an ancient goddess. Their integrity, pride, intelligence, grace, and generosity have been nurtured by a unique history.

In the seventh century B.C.E., the ancient Greeks invaded and colonized Trinacria, the Mediterranean island known today as Sicily. The Greeks introduced the olive tree to this fertile land, and Sicily soon became their major source of olive oil. Although the specific origins of Polizzi remain in archeological debate, all agree that the colony was established during this period. Most scholars believe a Grecian cult devoted to the Egyptian goddess Isis came to Sicily, seeking freedom from religious persecution. Its members established an outpost in the mountains of northwestern Sicily, far from the major Greek settlements of the eastern and southern regions. They named it Polis Isis, the City of Isis. At its center they built a temple to their goddess.

The Romans, during their later occupation, built roads, aqueducts, fortifications, and country villas in and around Polizzi. The mountain forests were clear-cut to provide timber for Roman warships. Agriculture was intensified, and all of Sicily became known as the granary of Rome.

The oldest surviving written record of Polizzi is dated 880, from the Byzantine period; a fortress built a century earlier is referenced in this document. The ruins of this fortress still grace the cityscape.

In 882, Polizzi was conquered by the Saracens. People still live in the low, connected, stucco-covered houses remaining from that time. The streets of this section of town twist and turn like an ancient casbah. At its center, a minaret reaches toward heaven, reconsecrated almost a millennium ago as the bell tower of a Roman Catholic church.

North African rule, although lasting for only two centuries more than a thousand years ago, has made an indelible mark on Polizzani culture and cuisine. Incomparable hospitality, the traditional code of propriety between men and women, even the rigid concepts of respect and vendetta—all of these embody a worldview that is more Levantine than European.

The Saracens brought pasta, almonds, and the spices of the East, such as saffron and cinnamon, to the table. They were the first to refine sugar and to explore the art of confectionery and pastry-making. Most important, however, the culturally advanced North Africans introduced Polizzi to the very notion of cuisine.

At that time, and in most of Europe for centuries to follow, rich and poor ate the same fare; the only difference was that the rich ate more of it. The Saracens, however, followed a grand tradition of dining rather than of feeding. Refined cooking techniques, meals served in courses, and the use of exotic golden spices, all new concepts for the Sicilians, were quickly embraced.

·   ·   ·

A generation before the Norman conquest of England in 1066, a powerful coalition of Greeks and Byzantines formed to hire the Norman army to expel the Arabs from Sicily. When the Normans saw the wonders of Sicily, they decided to break their mercenary agreement and take the island for themselves.

The other Norman conquest was accomplished by 1080. By 1071, Polizzi and the region of the Madonie Mountains was under Norman occupation. Within a hundred years, the island would lose its place as the geographic center of the Arab world, as a link between North Africa and the Middle East. Ever after, Sicily has been considered a southern outpost of Europe, always occupied but, as the Polizzani say, never conquered. Some maintain that Sicily is still occupied—by the Italians.

Holy Roman Emperor Federico II was the grandson of the Swabian ruler Barbarossa. His mother was Norman, and through her line he became the hereditary King of Sicily. While Federico was still a boy, his father died. His uncles, German nobles, usurped the kingdom and kept the boy-king and his mother, the queen, captive in the royal castle at Palermo. When the boy reached his majority, the queen found a way of escape and Federico was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

In 1234, Federico II was in the midst of a fourteen-year military campaign. His objective was to regain control of his island. The long campaign was not going well, and the Emperor was not having a good time. He longed for the magnificent pleasures of his court, which included a seraglio. The lavish oriental style Federico maintained in Palermo had prompted the Pope to sarcastically dub him The Baptized Sultan.

Federico needed to furlough his battle-weary troops and to rest himself. The mountaintop town of Polizzi, easily secured because of its geographic position, seemed like a good stopping place. He fully expected to find its populace, at the very least, indifferent to his condition, but to his surprise, Federico and his army were received with open arms.

So moved was he by the generous hospitality he encountered during his time there, Federico decreed henceforth the place would be called Polizzi la Generosa. In a second, more important, decree, he gave Polizzi the status of città demaniale, a city of the dominion. This meant that Polizzi would have a seat in the Sicilian parliament of the day and be under the direct rule of the king. The city would be free to make its own civic decisions without the intrusion of barons or other feudal lords. Until the unification of Italy six hundred years later, this status was reconfirmed by succeeding rulers of Sicily.

The city was granted its own coat of arms. In it is pictured the crowned imperial eagle, standing against a gold background. A shield on his chest contains the image of seven roses, representing the seven sections of the city. Caught in his talons is a banner that reads Politium Generosa Civitas, the City of Polizzi Generosa.

Polizzi Generosa flourished and prospered over the next seven centuries, growing to become the educational, cultural, and social center of the region. To this day, the Polizzani show an enlightened, free spirit unlike the populations of other nearby towns with less independent pasts.

Local lore hints that the ensuing improvement in the fortunes of Federico II was attributable to the clear mountain air, the serene setting, and the delicious, wholesome food he enjoyed during his sojourn in Polizzi Generosa. And perhaps this footnote to history is responsible, indeed, for turning Federico II into the preeminent ruler of the age, known to this day as Stupor Mundi, the Wonder of the World.

The anchor for this book is food. Over the centuries, Polizzi has developed a cuisine as unique as its history and as striking as its bucolic mountain setting. Millennia of occupation can be traced through the Polizzani cupboard. Olives from ancient Greece; almonds, spices, and sugar from North Africa; and tomatoes, potatoes, squashes, beans, peppers, and prickly pears from the Western Hemisphere by way of Spain are a few examples of the many imports that fill this cornucopia of edible culture.

What people eat and when they eat it is determined by seasonal availability, tradition, and good planning. Since the Middle Ages, homemade liquers have been popular in Polizzi. Through a simple process of maceration, fruits, herbs, and nuts are transformed into delicious, brilliantly colored cordials and after-dinner drinks. Canning, preserving, and sun-drying all play an important role in bringing the sweetness of summer to the winter’s table. In Polizzi Generosa, a family’s true wealth is calculated according to the cleverness with which these tasks have been accomplished and by the bounty of its cupboard.

This simple, frankly rustic cuisine, still enjoyed today, also has an enchanting playfulness about it. Literal translations of recipe titles produce such whimsical phrases as Drowned Lettuce Soup, Cauliflower Under Siege, and Almond Love Bites.

The wisdom and skill of many people, both home cooks and professionals, are included in these recipes. In Polizzi, culinary expertise is divided into two categories: those who cook and eat, and those who don’t cook but still eat heartily, knowing every recipe in minute (sometimes tedious) detail.

Many of the recipes that follow were shared by friends and relatives. In 1987, the Associazione Culturale Naftolia, the local Polizzani cultural organization, published a community cookbook. Charmingly titled Polizzi, Generosa Anche a Tavola (Polizzi, Generous Also at the Table), the book contains recipes authored by men and women of the city. A number of the recipes in this book are from that source.

As originally offered, orally or written, all of these recipes were intended for an audience that already knows them. Quantities were given in handfuls of this or ladlefuls of that. A more enigmatic measurement used for everything from salt to tomato sauce is q.b., quanta basta, whatever is enough.

I have translated and adapted these recipes to a format more suitable for the American cook. When necessary, ingredient substitutions have been noted, but happily, most of the traditional ones can easily be found in this country.

The key to Polizzani cuisine is utter simplicity. The actual taste of the main ingredient is always spotlighted, and changing one ingredient can produce an entirely different-tasting result. Centuries of refinement provide the counterpoint and complexity of flavor. There is an old Sicilian saying, easily adopted for the Polizzani table:

Quannu i Polizzani si fannu i casi, Pensanu c’annu a campari pi mill’anni. Ma quannu mancianu, Pensanu c’annu a muriri u nnumani.

When the Polizzani build their houses, They think they’re going to live for a thousand years. But when they eat, They think they’re going to die tomorrow.

I welcome you to this place of delicious imagination. I hope that the following pages will provide a panorama of the people, culture, and food of this ancient jewel of the Madonie. I hope that the so many beautiful things of Polizzi Generosa will find a place in your heart, and at your table, as they have for me.

One

My First Visit

First impressions are often accurate. They may not provide the whole story about a person or a place, but the insight they offer becomes a lasting reference point. My first visit to Polizzi Generosa, a place familiar through my grandparents’ stories yet physically unknown to me, falls into exactly this category.

The weeks before my first trip to Sicily in 1988 were an exciting time in my life, a time of renewal and beginnings. I had spent September working on a film in France for the first time. At the beginning of October, I met an American harpist, Carol Mukhalian, who was living and working in Paris. As destiny would have it, it was love at first sight.

I had planned to go to Sicily after the Paris trip. I wondered if anyone named Vilardi, my grandmother’s family name, was still alive. Since the emigration of my grandparents’ generation nearly a hundred years ago, contact with the Sicilian part of the family had virtually ceased.

The only clue I had was from Angelina, one of my grandmother’s first cousins. She had told me that we have a cousin who plays the tuba in the Police Band of Rome. But that was twenty years ago, and beyond that, I knew nothing of my Sicilian relatives. Having never found Polizzi Generosa on any map, it would be a true journey of discovery. When I told Carol of my plans, she agreed to join me.

We thought it best to travel as husband and wife. We had a hard enough time explaining to ourselves what was happening between us; a more traditional culture, we were certain, would not understand at all. Carol always wore an antique diamond and sapphire band on her right hand. She asked me if I would place it on the fourth finger of her left hand, and when I stopped shaking, we were on our way from Paris to Palermo.

The connecting flight from Milano to Palermo was impossibly delayed. I had managed to phone our hotel, the Grande Albergo della Palme (the Grand Hotel of the Palms), from Milano and asked to have a cold supper placed in our room for our midnight arrival.

When we finally arrived, we could see that the Grand Hotel must have been truly grand once, but time and neglect had taken their toll. Even the palms showed the wear of war and occupation. A diffident, aged bellman ceremoniously led us into a miniature modern elevator, and then down an endless twenty-foot-wide corridor to our room. Upon opening the door, I noticed first of all a hat rack. I always wear a hat and have observed that the modern world offers few places to hang one.

In a corner of the ample, high-ceilinged room was a small table set with two places. Under the protection of starched white linen napkins was laid the cold supper: chicken baked with garlic, herbs, and orange juice, green bean salad in a vinegary dressing, and potato salad with olive oil, capers, and onions. There was a chilled bottle of Sicilian white wine from the Regaliali winery and one of mineral water.

Dessert was a bowl of perfectly ripe fresh fruit. The pears seemed to cry when we peeled them, their flavor sweet and perfumy with an ever-so-slight astringency. Without doubt we were in Sicily. The thrill of our being there together kept us up until dawn.

The next afternoon, we bought a road map. For the first time I saw the name Polizzi Generosa printed on a map. My eyes filled at the reality: This place of childhood myth really does exist.

We rented a car, a Renault Cinque with Milano license plates. It took only the four-block drive from rental office to hotel to understand that in Palermo, to relinquish the right of way holds the same social status as being cuckolded. There are fewer traffic lights than Americans are used to, and their signals are mostly ignored anyway. To traverse an intersection, one must simply pull out into the chaos, leaving oneself in the hands of fate. Being in a small French car with continental plates gave us no primacy whatsoever in this madness.

Our destination, Polizzi Generosa, lay about seventy miles southeast of Palermo. The last quarter of the trip was on a two-lane state road that turns off the main coastal highway just past the city of Termini Imerese. When we reached this junction, it was dusk. Above us in the distance were the lights of Polizzi. As we wound our way up and around the mountain, the city would disappear, then reappear larger, closer, like a series of stop-motion photographs. Sooner than seemed possible, after a perilous set of switchbacks, a large sign proclaimed Welcome to Polizzi Generosa in several languages.

Our arrival, while momentous for Carol and me, was hardly noticed by the men at their work on the outskirts of town. I asked a garage mechanic, in my best Sicilian, if he knew of a hotel in town. He graciously answered with great formality that unfortunately there wasn’t a hotel in town, but there was one in the countryside below, the Villa Cariddi.

We wound our way back down the mountain and, following his directions, turned through an open gate into a courtyard. Before us was a charming little villa. In one room near the window, a grandmother sat crocheting. We had obviously turned into the wrong driveway, since the woman pretended not to notice us. We probably could have stayed parked in her courtyard all night. After all, this was Sicily, and what these strangers were doing in her courtyard was certainly none of her business.

I tapped on her window. She opened it. I respectfully apologized for the intrusion and said that I believed I’d made a mistake. With a warm, pleasant smile, she said, Perhaps. But if you are looking for the Villa Cariddi, it is the next house up the road.

The Villa Cariddi was a strangely austere Sicilian baroque structure. The windows were shuttered, the grounds overgrown. The property was filled with howling cats in heat. At first impression it seemed abandoned, but wisps of light seeping through the cracks in the shutters, and the wonderful aroma of cooking, implied otherwise.

Carol waited in the car as I walked up to the massive door and knocked. I expected it would be opened by a kindly grandfather not unlike my own. The door swung open wide, filling the courtyard with light and noise from a bustling room. The porter was not a sage old man in a well-worn cardigan at all, but a young man wearing a Brooks Brothers-like button-down shirt and a crew-neck sweater.

He rudely asked, What do you want? Thrown by his greeting, I mustered enough Sicilian to explain that we were looking for board and lodging. With flat indifference, he answered, We are full, and slammed the door, leaving us in the darkness with the cats.

I looked to Carol for encouragement and knocked again. He opened. I asked if there were any other places he could recommend. He said, To tell the truth, there are other places, but they are difficult to find, there are no telephones, and only I know where they are.

I knew what he was getting at, but his manner was rather disappointing. Instead of crossing his palm with silver, I quipped, So, if you please, tell me something: How do they find clients? He laughed coldly, slamming the door in my face once more. I turned and walked back to the car. Without understanding a word, Carol knew what had happened. She suggested that we go back to town for another look around.

We returned up the perilous route to Polizzi. Around the bend from the mechanics, we found a pizzeria. We stopped for a coffee and to regroup. The place was named Il Pioniere, The Pioneer, and was oddly decorated with large original paintings of the American Old West. In the center of the large room, well-worn rustic tables and benches made of split logs completed the theme. Near the bar, at small café tables and chairs, sat a group of old men drinking coffee. We stood at the bar and drank ours. The room rumbled with the same kind of silence as in a western movie when the stranger walks into the saloon.

I asked the man behind the bar if he knew of any hotels. He sang out, The Villa Cariddi. I told him that we had already been there and that it was full. I asked if there were any others. He nervously answered, I don’t know. I don’t know. Suddenly, one of the old men stood up and declaimed in a loud voice, You know what you should do? And then to the crowd, You know what they should do? Everyone held his breath. He continued, "You should go to the Università della Muratori." I translated for Carol, explaining that he said we should go to the University of the Bricklayers. She rolled her eyes. I, uncertain of his meaning, asked if this was a hotel. Yes, he said. "It has an odd name but it is comfortable, with very good food. The owner is named Santo Lipani. Be sure to tell him that the Distribbuturu Agip sent you." At first I thought this was some grand municipal title, but soon realized that this gentleman was the distributor or owner of an Agip-brand gasoline station.

As the kind gentleman was giving us directions, the barman magically remembered that he had, behind the bar, a stack of brochures for the place. Carol and I exchanged a glance but said nothing.

After the business of hotel directions was settled, I mentioned that my grandmother was Polizzani. The distributor said, I know that. I can hear it in your accent. All of the old men now smiled and nodded at us.

I realized that everyone we had come in contact with knew exactly why I had come to Polizzi Generosa. Their code of respect prevented them from speaking to the issue; they would not invade my privacy. But now that I had brought it up, they were free to ask my family’s name.

Vi-lar-di, the distributor pronounced carefully. He said it again almost in a whisper, building the drama of the moment. He became lost in great brow-knitting thought. Finally he said, "There is

Reviews for Many Beautiful Things

[signoraedie_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have read the previous books by Vincent Schiavelli and they always feel like "homecoming" to me. An Italo-Americano who relishes his Sicilian heritage writes with love and passion of his grandfather and the recipes passed down from him. In this book he returns to the ancestral town of Polizzi Generosa and tells the story of the town, his relationship with the people that develops over time, and the recipes that they call their own. Wonderful book!